Intellectual Intercourse: The Devil’s Threeway Is in The Details

(Some names have been changed to protect privacy.)

I ask a lot of questions. I’m a naturally inquisitive person. So when I joined adult content creator Twitter, I had a whole lot of questions to ask. Some questions were about marketing my erotica. Some were about how white people can respectfully and convincingly write BIPOC characters. Some were about various aspects of sexuality. I was curious how other straight men would react in a threesome with a woman and another man. I created a survey using Twitter polls, and it had some fascinating results.

There are some obvious flaws with the survey. Especially when it comes to questionnaires about sex and sexuality, you have a selection bias. There’s no way you’re going to get the genuinely puritanical among us to give feedback on whether or not they’d like to get spit-roasted. The selection bias is compounded by the fact that I have fewer than a thousand followers, and most of them are adult content creators or consumers. My sample size ended up being only 109 straight men. Even with the issues baked into this particular survey, it still makes for a good springboard into broader conversations about sex and sexuality.

That’s going to impact the results, but it doesn’t mean that the data is worthless. Even among the straight men of the community, the results were not what I expected. One of the most fascinating statistics was that while 52.5% of the respondents were willing to receive anal sex from the other man, only 47.4% said they would kiss the other man. Several people chalked it up to kissing as being seen as more intimate, which I guess makes sense. Another thing I hadn’t anticipated was a majority was willing to blow a guy and receive anal sex, and a plurality would let a man come in their mouth. Though, there’s a big difference between talking about or fantasizing about a threesome and actually having one. A 2017 study found that while 82% of men and 31% of women said they would be willing to have a threesome, only 13% had actually had a mixed-gender threesome. (Also of note is that there were three times as many two-women-one-man threesomes than the two-men-one-woman variety.)

I tried to find other data to see if I could back up my findings. There are plenty of studies about people’s willingness to have threesomes, or at least how many people fantasize about them. Still, I had trouble finding any that went into granular detail about what straight men were willing to do at a woman’s request or what a woman might request. According to a 2014 survey, 30.9% of the women surveyed fantasize about sex with two men. But there aren’t readily available data about what those fantasies entail. 19.3% said they’d like to watch two men have sex. Does that mean they’d like it to be part of a threesome?

(These findings may exist, but if so, they are more than likely behind paywalls. I’m not currently making enough writing smutty things to justify the expense of accessing every scientific journal that might shed light on the matter.)

While some women would like to be the center of attention, others would love to play ring leader and have the men perform for them. But I don’t have any solid numbers on how many women fall into either category. I have a few people who were willing to talk about their experiences regarding two-men-one-woman threesomes.

As a bi man, @OxyfromSg (Syd) said he considers himself lucky to have participated in several threesomes. In his experience, if the other man isn’t willing to go with the flow, “The guy acts as if I am not there. It is all about the woman and him having sex with her or coming. The fact that I am there is not important to him; neither is my pleasure or (a lot of the time) hers. He may think that the idea of a threesome is cool, but the actual taking part in one is something else. As soon as he sees another penis, then he goes all macho and wants to prove he is the best, and the way to do that is to fuck her hard.”

This aligns with the experiences of some of the other people I talked with. One woman, Dangerouscurvz, hasn’t had much success in this arena. She’s had three attempts. Each time “everyone is hot and heavy and gung ho, but when it gets to the reality, the guys kinda get weirded out with having another guy in the room or nearby.” She attributes the sudden change in enthusiasm to, “They all have had the images of porno stuck in their head, and reality isn’t the same.”

Sam, a bi man, said that he has had ten threesomes involving straight men. In three of those, the other man bailed. “Most straight guys don’t get as far as the bed unless they want to try something. But you need the [woman] to encourage them, or they usually back out.”

Syd confirms this.

I have found that if the guy gets into it, gets hard, has the attention of the woman, and then she suggests that he play around or kisses the other guy, it becomes much more likely. Like he is being given permission not to be so macho. Usually, if he is up for some kissing and touching while the girl is involved, he will be up for anything. I have been in situations where the guy would barely look at me until the woman said “kiss him,” and it has ended up in me having anal with him as the bottom and him loving it because his manhood wasn’t challenged at the start.

Maybe the old spaghetti aphorism is true. (Though that is usually aimed at women when they say they’re straight. “So is spaghetti until it gets wet.”) Some science perhaps backs that up. When you’re horny, you are more likely to do things you might even find disgusting otherwise. This is true for both women and men. (And going down on someone seems a lot more rewarding than drinking juice with a bug in it.)

Some may think that any man who would have sex with another man is gay or bi. But sexuality isn’t defined by who you have sex with. If that were the case, all virgins would automatically be asexual. (The idea that links sex acts to sexuality plays a big part in bi-erasure.) There have been plenty of straight pornstars who are gay-for-pay. They have sex with same-gender partners for money. Sex workers of all stripes have done it. The question really comes down to you. Not what you’re willing to do for whatever motivation — money, lost a bet, or your partner’s sexual gratification, but what you want to do when nothing else is a factor.

Everyone is allowed to set their own limits and boundaries. I place no judgment on someone who isn’t up for one sexual activity or another. (As long as they don’t get upset if their partner isn’t willing to do something. Your personal boundaries are one thing. Hypocrisy is another.) Although it might be interesting to see what the expectations are in the opposite direction. Would a man in a threesome with two other women want the two women to kiss, fondle, and fuck each other — at least in part — for his enjoyment? How accommodating are straight women in threesomes with another woman? I also think that more detailed studies about the willingness of straight men to engage in sex acts with another man during a threesome should be done. Though I’d perhaps want to see it with a broader audience than the denizens of naughty Twitter.